Posted on 01/06/2011 12:04:47 PM PST by ConjunctionJunction
I used to work for DoD and there are vast amounts of duplicative and unnecessary bureaucracy that not only could but should be cut.
We need to cut 2 Trillion dollars a year, and we needed to do it yesterday. No amount of Marines can stave off an internal collapse due to fiscal insanity.
I think even a lot of Freepers are in denial about just what is coming down the pike for this country.
That means President Palin will have to spend billions to repair he military after Obama puts a hurt on them and pumps up our enemies in various and nefarious ways.
I don't know why so many conservatives seem to think that the Department of Defense is immune from the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
That’s fine, there’s probably 78 billion worth of able-bodied, red-blooded American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines that are more than ready to get out before they are forced to service the homo-leninists of the new pink armed forces.
The repeal of DADT was going to cause that anyway.
Gotta’ cut Defense so the One can vacation and see the World with his entourage.
>> Plan to shrink active duty Army and Marine Corps.
>> The repeal of DADT was going to cause that anyway.
So budget cuts, not DADT, will be “the reason” for the exodus.
Don’t you think that if we are looking to cut spending we need to look at the TRILLION DOLLARS we have spent on overseas military adventures before we start cutting programs that really benefit people. That’s what Dennis Kucinich says.
This of course brings up a larger discussion that I think we as Americans need to have anyway: has the time come for us to reduce our foreign presence in a major way? To return to a concept of national defense more in line with our traditional republican (small 'r') notions of the proper role of the military? Has our foreign presence since WWII - so much now criticized as an imperial one - now outgrown both our own strategic needs and our ability to pay for it? Conversely would we be drawing down at precisely the time when new emerging threats like China, Iran, etc., are ramping up? Will there ever be a time to drawn down? I would love to here some informed FReeper views on this without the 'isolationist' versus 'imperialist' hyperbole that too often characterizes this discussion. I'm open to both viewpoints.
The Dims did this, not the Republicans.
There are two pieces of the budget process:
1. The budget resolution which is internal to each house and lays out the spending authority of the various appropriations subcommittees - they did not pass one this year, because they already knew they were busting any budget they could write down - and so the individual committees have had free reign.
2. The individual appropriations bills for each agency. Although the individual houses passed most of these, no conference to reconcile was held, in part because everyone knew spending was going to be an election issue. Once the dims got tossed their was no fixing it.
As a consequence the Senate did what is usual in an election year - passed an Omnibus spending bill for the remainder of the year - overlooking the Constitutional requirement that all spending bills originate in the House. It was dead on arrival in the house, and the government is presently financed through a(nother) continuing resolution pending the passage of the next continuing resolution or a set of actual appropriations bills.
I’m open to both viewpoints.
I’m with you but I lean towards the position that we are over relying on “hard diplomacy” as they call it in the foreign policy business.
Also we are over using to the point of abuse our reservists.
ditto.
Creating the New Pink Peace Corpse
First, China is an emerging power, but not the emerging military "threat" that everyone supporting ever expanding military budgets would portray them as. The Chinese are not by nature or tradition expansionists or imperialists. Are they savvy businessmen and traders. Yes. Are the duplicitous diplomatic negotiators. Of course. Do they steal industrial secrets and use them to compete against us. Unrefutably yes.
But the counter to this is not more mechanized divisions to stave of the imagined Sino armored thrust down the Aleutians and through Alaska, Canada and the Cascades to strike at the heartland of California. It is to revitalize our own intellectual and industrial capital and take economic production as the basis for economic competition seriously.
I totally agree on the reservists. On the larger point, according to critics like the late Chalmers Johnson, America has upwards of 700 foreign military bases. The question has to be asked: what are we doing in all these places, how long can we afford it, and what are the consequences of this kind of unprecedented global footprint?
Oh, I quite agree with that. Well said.
Four of the five top stories in the sidebar are about explosions around the country and they want to cut troop strength. Makes NO sense...but nothing that this administration does makes sense!
We could always lose less E-9s. All they do is figure out new places you need to wear your PT belt or cover.
Lose = use
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